Christopher Whiteside MBE is Conservative County Councillor for the Egremont North and St Bees Division of Cumbria County Council. The division includes St Bees, Bigrigg, Wood End, Moor Row, part of the Mirehouse area of Whitehaven, and surrounding countryside.
He is also deputy chair (political and campaigning) of the North-West region of the voluntary wing of the Conservative party.
Chris lives and works in Copeland with his wife and family.

Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Quote of the day 26th June 2018

“It’s now time for the UK Government to end its costly prevarication on airport expansion and support Heathrow’s plans to ensure Scotland, and the United Kingdom as a whole, can begin to reap the rewards on offer."
(Keith Brown, who was elected this month as Deputy Leader of the SNP and who has been Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work in the SNP government of Scotland since 2016, quoted in the Scottish Government statement backing a third runway at Heathrow after he signed a memorandum of understanding with Heathrow which both sides argued will create up to 16,000 new jobs in Scotland.

Despite the fact that this is and remains the official position of the SNP government in Scotland, the SNP's members of the Westminster parliament abstained yesterday in the House of Commons vote to approve the principle of the expansion, saying that the UK government had "failed to make the case" for Scottish benefits which their own Scottish government says it has secured.)

POSTSCRIPT 27/6/2018 - describing Keith Brown as Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work in the Scottish government, in which capacity he issued the above quote and a post which he still held at the time I wrote the above post, appears to have been the kiss of death. Nicola Sturgeon's reshuffle this week took him out of the Scottish cabinet to concentrate on campaigning in his role as Deputy Leader of the SNP.

Anonymous - while I would not like to predict that every slot which was viable and available under a previous pattern of demand will be restored, if the third runway is built it would make commercial sense for a significant proportion of the new slots to be allocated to regional airports.

The memorandum of understanding between Heathrow and the Scottish government did guarantee a number of slots for Scotland and I understand that they offered to increase the number from 100 to 200.

I do not know whether an increase in slots for regional airports will be a condition of planning permission but it would not surprise me if some legally binding method of requiring more slots for regional airports were to be included in the process at some stage, and I would be inclined to support that.